Moonlight Sonata Piano Visualizer
The first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as falling notes on a glowing keyboard. Restyle it and export the video, or drop your own recording or MIDI file.
Moonlight Sonata at a glance
- Work
- Piano Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor, Op. 27 No. 2, "Sonata quasi una fantasia", 1st movement
- Composer
- Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
- Composed
- 1801
- Published
- 1802
- Key
- C♯ minor
- Tempo
- Adagio sostenuto
- Difficulty
- Intermediate for the first movement; the stormy third movement is advanced
- The demo plays
- The opening of the first movement, 74 s
What you see in the falling notes
The right hand plays an unbroken stream of triplets, so the notes fall as an even rain of short notes in the middle of the keyboard. Below them sit long octaves in the bass, and just above them the melody enters with its slow dotted rhythm. Nothing climbs high: the whole excerpt stays below the B above middle C.
- 239notes
- 3.2notes per second on average
- 7notes in the busiest second
- 7notes sounding at once, at most
- F#1 to B442 keys from the lowest note to the highest
- 54%of the notes below middle C, in the left-hand colour
Counted from the MIDI file of the demo excerpt (74 s). The sustain pedal goes down 26 times.
About Moonlight Sonata
Beethoven wrote the sonata in 1801 and published it in 1802 as "Sonata quasi una fantasia", a sonata in the manner of a fantasy: instead of opening fast, it starts with this slow, hushed movement. He dedicated it to the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, a young pupil of his at the time.
The name "Moonlight" is not Beethoven's. It comes from the critic Ludwig Rellstab, who compared the first movement to moonlight shining on a lake, and it stuck after the composer's death. Beethoven asked for the whole movement to be played very softly with the dampers raised, which gives it its blurred, ringing sound.
MIDI of the demo: Bernd Krueger, piano-midi.de, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE. Videos made from it carry the same credit and licence (terms). How to make one: step by step.
Famous pieces in falling notes
Frequently Asked Questions
Beethoven called it "Sonata quasi una fantasia". The nickname comes from the critic Ludwig Rellstab, who compared the first movement to moonlight shining on a lake; it caught on after Beethoven's death.
The first movement is intermediate: the notes are not fast, but keeping the triplets even and the melody singing above them takes control. The third movement, Presto agitato, is advanced.
Yes. The composition is in the public domain, but the MIDI file of this demo is by Bernd Krueger (piano-midi.de) under CC BY-SA 3.0 DE, so a video made from it has to credit him, for example "MIDI: Bernd Krueger, piano-midi.de, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE", and be shared under the same licence. With your own recording or MIDI file of the piece, only your rights to that file count.
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